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Around the time most of Green Bay’s secondary was standing around in their own end zone watching New York Giants receiver Hakeem Nicks embarrass them on a jump ball, it was becoming clear — the Year of the Quarterback ended this weekend.

Packer Aaron Rodgers and Saint Drew Brees will have to content themselves with an MVP award and a place in the record books, respectively. The two of them can spend the rest of January puttering around the house and clearing off space on the mantelpiece. The lesser lights on the defensive end of things will carry on in their place.

If we’re looking for new catchphrases, we can call what remains of the NFL playoffs Three Weeks of Well-Rounded Defence. By that measure, Green Bay played triangularly last night.

We knew the Packers defence was poor. Putting their feet up for most of the last month didn’t help things. Allowing the offence to do the same was disastrous.

Against the surging Giants, Rodgers was only serviceable. His receivers, who dropped eight passes, were execrable. And when the Packers offence was forced to lean on their stoppers, they gave the opposition nothing but green lights.

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The Giants swamped the Packers 37-20, dredging up the nightmare of ’07 for Green Bay. How’s that undefeated season feel right now? There is something to be said for momentum, and it’s this: it’s better than the other thing.

In keeping with our new theme, Giants QB Eli Manning was not brilliant, but just good enough to take advantage of the repeated opportunities provided by his defence. The back-breaker was that unexpected Hail Mary to Nicks with no time left on the clock to end the first half. Green Bay threatened in the second, but the Giants were repeatedly there with stops and takeaways.

Now it’s down to four teams: New York, Baltimore, San Francisco and New England. Three of them feature hard-hitting defences whose idea of “prevent” is an eight-man blitz. The other is the Patriots, whose offence is so ruthless it functions as its own best protection.

New York now attempts to get to its second Super Bowl from the wild-card round in five seasons. They visit San Francisco on Saturday, where 49ers quarterback Alex Smith will attempt to prove he can retain whatever Touched by the Hand of God brilliance he drained from Tim Tebow this weekend.

Earlier in the afternoon, the Baltimore Ravens were busy removing Houston heads, one tackle at a time. The Texans will console themselves with the fact that they managed to come back after what was, by Baltimore’s scanty standards, a huge start — 17 first-quarter points.

Baltimore will know that despite Arian Foster’s best efforts on the ground, the Texans were never really in this one.

Most of the NFL’s weekly allotment of charisma was used up in the final four minutes of Saturday’s San Francisco-New Orleans butt clencher. The three games that followed were intermittently dreary stuff, capped by watching Houston punt returner Jacoby Jones repeatedly play the ball as if he’d bet the over.

Baltimore was equally useless on offence, but when they needed stops and interceptions (including two in the fourth quarter), they got them. It ended 20-13.

This sets up a meeting on Sunday that should be at least half fascinating — the half involving a New England offence that averages 33 points per game and a Ravens defence that allows only 17 points per contest.

That’ll be the interesting part, though it probably won’t be where the game’s won. It will be up to football’s Rodney Dangerfield, Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco, to prove he deserves the respect he’s disastrously spoken about again and again. Based on his career to this point, he barely deserves a job. But hope springs eternal when you’ve got brutes like Terrell Suggs and Haloti Ngata keeping you in games you have no right to win.

And while New England’s defence is infamously the league’s worst, it mounted its best showing to date against an overmatched Tim Tebow on Saturday night. An equally workmanlike effort should do the Super Bowl trick with Brady standing back on the other end, metronomically tossing high, floating Frisbees that sticky-fingered tight end Rob Gronkowski keeps climbing up to catch.

New England cannot be stopped, only mitigated. The remaining teams — New York, San Francisco and Baltimore — are all offensive ciphers.

Therefore, from here until the end, defence will take centre stage.

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